A Week of Sleep
by skyfare
Summary: One key week in Goren and Eames' lives. Saturday!
1. Sunday

**A/N. So my aforementioned posting deluge has turned into, well, a posting...trickle. However, this story takes place over a week (hence the title) and I'll post Monday's tomorrow, Tuesday's on Tuesday, etc., barring some unfortunate event. ****Oh, and not all of them are this short (and things will eventually happen; it's not just his nightly ruminations on sleep). I don't own them; T for language to be on the safe side. Thanks for reading!**

**SUNDAY**

Four am is when everything becomes desperate. If you're awake, that is. If you're one of the unlucky coffee-drenched souls walking around permanently holding back yawns. If you're asleep, four am is fine. It passes by unnoticed, like a casual look between two partners.

If you're lucky, that is.

He's not often a lucky man.

He closes his eyes against the blare and glare of the tv and he props himself up with pillows on the couch and he waits.

Maybe his luck will change.

Ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahhhhahhaa.

He _hates _the night. Loves sleep, but hates the night. Sleep is an escape. Sleep is earth-shatteringly normal. He strives for sleep. He longs for it (sometimes more than he longs for his partner). He reaches and reaches and reaches and yet he can't _do it_, because the time spent waiting for sleep, alone and quiet with his thoughts, terrifies him perhaps more than clowns and not knowing who the killer is and lockjaw and repressed memories and death itself, waiting to claim him.

Ooh, wait. He's drifting now, his breathing slowing and his heart settling and his body relaxing. Shhh. He's sleep—oh, no, no wait. Almost _there _and then the intrusion of a childhood memory—lock the door lock the door Bobby oh honey wake up lock the door they're coming this night they're _coming _oh Bobby I'm still sore from the last time (it's all in your head, Ma) I can't do this anymore (neither can I) and I don't know why it's _me _they're after—and he never once asked who _they _were because he was afraid of her answer.

He opens his eyes, sits back up. Turns back to the distraction of weather forecasts and infomercials and twenty year old sitcoms.

Luck is cruel.

So is sleep.

So are the memories he's clinging to, the memories he can't let go of even now, forty years later.

This is one of the reasons why people turn to alcohol and drugs. They hate this Pilgrim's Progress passageway from consciousness into sleep—and hell, some blow or a few shots should do _just fine _at blurring out the purgatory.

He reaches for his pomegranate juice. Drinks, shuddering at the bitterness of it against four-in-the-morning mouth.

What a horrible day.

At least tomorrow he has work to look forward to.


	2. Monday

**MONDAY**

He's trying not to doze off at his desk when Eames suddenly stands, stuffing her hands into her back and arching her body out towards him as she stretches. He looks, as he always does, and she pretends not to notice, as she always does.

"It's getting late, Bobby. Time to go home."

"You go ahead," he tells her. "I think I'm going to stay for a while yet."

She shakes her head. "You're not sleeping again, I can see—"

He rustles some papers. "I'm fine."

He's not.

His partner slides her coat on (the puffy one, today), and then unexpectedly leans over him. Grasps his shoulder. "Get some rest, Bobby."

He nods against the presence of her so close to him, thinking _stay stay please stay _and yet _go Eames oh Alex you're tired you look tired go home and savor some sleep if you can._

She goes.

He glances at the clock. Ten past ten.

_Hours _to go yet.

He puts his head down and continues going through files until it's three in the morning again and he can't stand it any longer. He flings his arm out on his desk, a sorry makeshift excuse for a pillow, and his eyes close. He's not so much sleeping as just passed out, but it's dark and quiet and still so he'll take it.

**A/N. Wow, so I remember this as being longer (it's been a couple of months since I've written this). Anyway, either Tuesday's or Thursday's is a decent length. **


	3. Tuesday

**A/N. ****I meant to say this before and I forgot, but the last short story I posted, Rocking--neither that nor this are part of the one series I'm working on. The stories in that series are: Cold, Starless, Stare Decisis, Cy Pres, and two future ones tentatively titled In the Valley of the Village and Blood. However, it doesn't matter if you don't read them in order or if you skip a story or anything, since each story is independent of actual events that happened previously; I'm just calling it a series more because it's following a timeline in my head for the emotional buildup until they actually get together. Also, some of the other stories I've written sort of follow this timeline--I don't quite know how to explain this. Basically I'm just writing whatever I want to write, and it sort of ended up that I think the events in those stories could have all happened in this timeline leading up to them together (NO I DON'T WANT TO RESTART MY COMPUTER YET aaaaargh stupid virus protection program message that keeps popping up). **

**Anyway, if you don't read those stories as if they are part of a series, that's fine. I don't care, because really, the timeline is just in my head so I can properly massage the emotional direction and events of them getting together, the long delicious buildup. Each story is independent of the events of the others, so far, although with Cy Pres it might make more sense if you would read Stare Decisis first. But that just entirely destroys what I've been saying. Oh, God. Actually--once I figure out what the hell I'm trying to say, I'll post it in my profile.**

**Also, (also I'm sorry this author's note is so long), also I said yesterday that either today or Thursday was the long one. I went back and reread all of them last night, and it turns out I was thinking of Saturday's. Not that Saturday is actually that long; it just took me forever to write. **

* * *

**TUESDAY**

He teeters on nausea the entire day. Two hours of restless quaking sleep a night will do that to you, particularly if you've cuddled up to a desk instead of pillows and warm living creatures.

He doesn't talk much. Head swimming, bobbing heavily. Grit in eyes. He feels like he's drunk without any of the pleasantness of _getting _drunk, and insomnia is not a chemical that can be washed out of the blood, hour by hour, through the liver until soberness returns.

Eames leaves at lunchtime for a while and he barely even notices she's gone until she's back, coffee in hand. She holds it out to him and he takes it. His fingers brushing hers.

"What time did you go home last night, Bobby?"

"I didn't." He raises the coffee to his lips and then has to set it down, overwhelmed by the intensity of the smell. Everything intensifies when you haven't slept. Odors. Colors.

Memories.

Feelings.

"Thanks for the coffee, Eames."

She smiles. "You're going to need it."

The afternoon passes agonizingly slow—every beat seems an eternity, yet he looks up randomly and discovers whole hours have disappeared, sucked away in the guise of his consciousness as he's been remembering his past.

It's easier when they have a case. When they have perps to chase and details to unwind, but right now all they're doing is playing paperwork catch up for the sudden spate of cases they've had in the last month.

Everywhere he looks he sees files. Mounds of them hiding Eames from his view (gee _thanks_, paperwork, the one bright spot on the horizon eradicated yet again by _you_). And the paper is too white and the words blend together and eventually he can't even tell if the reports he's typing up make sense or not but he doesn't care because he's so damn tired.

At midnight he takes a walk around the squad room and sees Eames still at her desk.

"What're you still doing here?" His words slow and twisted and slurred.

She cocks an eyebrow at him and slowly shakes her head so her hair swishes on her shoulders. "You're still here."

"You don't have to stay because I'm here." Another wave for his head to go under. Must sit down before he topples over. He sinks down to the floor and leans back against Nichols' desk and closes his eyes, waiting for the sleep-induced dizziness to pass.

He senses his partner get up, come over to him. "Bobby—"

"I'm fine." He hauls himself off the ground and reels, staggering backwards. "Fine. I just want to finish up, Eames. You go ahead."

Her hand suddenly on his side, steadying him. "Why don't you want to go home?"

And he is so tired that he actually tells her. "I can't sleep—I want to, would _like _to sleep, but I lay down and I close my eyes and I'm almost there when something snaps me back so I'm awake again and then sleep is even further off, until I've been there for so long that it's almost an impossibility, and then it's too late so there's no point in sleeping for forty-five minutes when I could when I'll just get up twice as groggy and still unsatisfied and still awake." _I don't think that made sense_, he thinks, but it doesn't matter because Alex is steering him towards the conference room they reserve for squadroom meetings, where there is a couch and a nice little table and some comfortable chairs.

She pushes him down to the couch and swings his feet up, tucking her jacket underneath his head so suddenly all he smells is cotton-woven _her_.

"You leaving?" he mutters sleepily, burrowing his nose in a sleeve escaping from the bundle of her jacket.

"I'm right here, Bobby." Her words come at him from very far away, echoing and echoing around his head until they are singing in his ears, the lilt of her voice drenching him until he's slipping crashing under the fog and into night.

With her in the room, occasionally murmuring something to him, he drifts. A fake, tantalizing sleep—his eyes are closed and he can't control the random thoughts floating across his mind and his body won't move, but at the same time he _sees _the darkness and he _recognizes _the thoughts and he _feels _the sculpture of his body lying immobile, so that when he wakes up four hours later he can't decide if he actually woke up or if he just opened his eyes and rejoined the moving alive.


	4. Wednesday

**WEDNESDAY**

"I need a favor." Ross, staring at them as they drift into his office.

He blinks. Can't stop blinking, scrubbing his hands over reddened eyes and twitching around the room trying to stay awake, since his fake sleep in the conference room was less than satisfying.

"What is it, Captain?" Eames. Eames' voice. That voice lulling him off into darkness last night/this morning/some time ago but he can't remember exactly when because that would require brain cells to yawn and blink and stretch and they're all still slumped over their tiny little brain cell desks feeling just as sick as he does this morning.

"I need the two of you to come to a stakeout tonight. Nichols and Wheeler need backup, and"—Ross sighs—"it's a high profile case. They suspect the top investment banker in New York for soliciting murder, so I need all my best detectives out there tonight."

He feels rather than sees Eames glance over at him. He nods, and it feels far too loud and off-balance in the quiet hum of everyday office noise.

"Are you up for that, Detectives?"

He's still nodding.

"We are," Eames says. But as they walk out of the room together she turns and puts her hand on his arm. Her fingers burn. "Are we?"

"We are," he echoes her.

Ross sticks his head out of his office. "Actually, you two, go home for now. Get some sleep and come back here at eight."

"I don't think that's necessary," he begins, but Ross glares him into silence.

"It's an _order_, Detective. I need you both awake tonight."

He kicks the floor and walks away. He's at his desk, collecting his things, when Eames comes up to him, stifling a yawn behind her hand. "Your place is closer."

Back at his apartment he takes Eames some blankets in the guest room before going into his bedroom and shutting the door and settling down to try and sleep in this glaring sunlight.

But not daylight, and not even Eames in the next room will allow him to turn off his mind and edge into sleep.

He rolls over on to his side and clicks the television on. If he's not going to sleep then he's going to deaden his mind _some _way.

The blankets wave warm and heavy against his skin. The pillow huddles soft beneath his head. The low drone of crime show marathons murmurs in the background.

So comfortable. So long since he's _slept_. So achingly close.

_Almost..._

"Bobby?"

He sits straight up before he even realizes what his body is doing, his limbs jolted into instinctive action by her voice. "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing." But she sits down on the edge of his bed.

"Can't you sleep?"

She slides under the covers and props herself up against the headboard. "Not really. I heard your tv so I figured you couldn't, either. What are we watching?"

He stuffs the remote in her hand and lies back down on his side, his back to her. "I'm just going to…close my eyes, Eames."

"Okay." Her hand finds its way on to his back and she absently begins rubbing his shoulders. "Relax. Go to sleep, if you can."

"I can't," he mutters.

Her hand on his back slows. "Do you want me to go?"

He cranes his head over his shoulder to see her. "No—stay. It's fine. It's not you."

"Then what _is _it, Bobby?"

He rolls back over as her hand continues to swirl over his back. "I've been thinking about my mom lately." There. He said it. The words are out there now and he almost doesn't care because he can feel sleep sucking away at him.

Eames eases down until her head is right behind his, her voice murmuring in his ear. "Why?"

He closes his eyes. Imagines her thumb rubbing his stomach.

"You can tell me," she whispers.

His breathing evens out and he dozes off--only to wake up minutes later to the alarm on his cell phone going off.

"Time for the stakeout already?" he mumbles into something soft and warm. He huddles up to the warmth, throws an arm around it and tugs it closer under his body.

And then it hugs him back.

He sits straight up in bed, glancing with some horror at what appears to be his partner lying beside him. "_Eames?_"

"You were expecting someone else?"

"I didn't even realize…sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

She gets out of bed and stretches, pulling her arms above her head and _God _it's like a magnet, he can't stop looking, until her back cracks so loudly that he ducks. "I didn't figure you'd cuddle up to me fully conscious, Goren. It's okay."

She slides her shoes back on and leaves his bedroom without looking back.

_Going to be a fun stakeout…_

It's _freezing. _Which is ridiculous at the end of May, but he's so damn cold in the car that he keeps shivering; violent, sudden shivers that wrack his entire body; shivers that he pretends not to even notice in the hope that Eames won't say anything.

"I can't believe you're cold," Eames smirks. "It's almost _summer_."

He huddles deeper into the seat and keeps his eyes trained on the road.

"Although you do get cold when you don't sleep a lot," she muses out loud. "Which you haven't been doing."

Was that a movement? He presses his forehead against the cool window and tries to will his headache away.

"So why the insomnia?" she persists. "You were starting to tell me earlier and then I think you dozed off."

"Aren't _you_ cold?"

"_I've _been sleeping just fine, thank you." But there's a little note of something in her voice that makes him turn to her.

"You sure about that?"

She shrugs. "Mostly."

"Tell me."

A sudden shiver (hers), and she remains silent.

"Eames?"

"You know, I am cold," she says. "The temperature must be dropping."

"Must be."

She lifts her coffee and drinks steadily.

Two quiet hours later he's shaking so badly he can barely see straight.

"I'd turn the car on, put on the heater, but I think that might be a bit of a giveaway."

"It's okay," he manages. "'M fine."

Eames rolls her eyes. "Right. Get over here."

"What?"

"Come _here_, Bobby."

He stares at her, doesn't move. A sigh gusts out of her and she reaches out towards him. Pulls him to her so they're propped up shoulder to shoulder. "You were in the Army; didn't you learn about using body heat for warmth?"

Her shoulder presses into his arm not uncomfortably. "I—we did. Had to use it a couple of times, actually."

"And did it work?"

"It did. But"—he leans back and wraps his arm around her shoulders. Tugs her closer, so she's leaning against his chest—"you need more than shoulder to shoulder contact for it be effective."

She hesitates. Her muscles stiff and unyielding underneath his fingers--but then she rests her head back against his chest. "Official purposes," she murmurs. "We can't be proper detectives if we're popsicles."

"Of course." He finds himself playing with her elbow, rubbing the tip and slowly stroking her arm through the cloth of her jacket.

"Ah—Bobby, I can't imagine _this_ went over too well in the Army."

He snorts into her hair. "Nope. I tried to restrain myself there."

She leans back so she can see his face. For a brief hopeful moment he thinks she's going to kiss him—his mouth suddenly crumbles dry and he swallows thickly. "Not that there's anything wrong with it," she murmurs, and her face breaks out into a wild grin, almost as if she was reading his thoughts about her lips and nose and earlobes and clavicle and the magical bits below.

But nothing more is said. Eames turns back around, and his arm is still around her, and this _warmth _of hers, heat gushing out of her body until he feels enveloped in his partner, drenched in her, consumed in her; until he wants to burrow under the covers with her and tell her the real reason he's not sleeping, that this week is the anniversary of--

The car radio crackles and Ross' disgusted voice comes out staticky and irritated. "Goren, Eames, go home. Stakeout's over. SVU just got a call about a body two blocks over and it's him."

Eames grabs for the radio. "Roger that, Captain."

She shrugs out of his arms and starts the ignition. "Guess we can have the heat on now."

"Right," he murmurs, thinking that maybe he preferred the other method.

"I'll drop you back at your place," she says as she pulls out and heads for the highway, "so you can get some sleep before work."

Sleep.

Right.

**A/N. What's pink and fluffy?**

**Pink fluff.**

**And what's this?**

**Take away the pink.**

**Also, my brain is fitzing out with commas and th**e**re are a lot of places where I can't decide if there should be one or not (amazingly enough, every comma lesson since the fourth grade has happened when I've had band lessons, or chorus lessons, or wandering the hallway time--oh, the misspent youth), and so since I have 29 minutes to make my Wednesday deadline I am just going to post this. If you do see any mistakes, drop me a line and I'll fix it then.**


	5. Thursday

**THURSDAY**

It feels like this week has been one long, continuous day. A stretch of pointed dry periods of consciousness intermixed with brief blissful spurts of something not exactly sleep, but a general deadening to the world—his mind shut off, at least, and that's all he wanted (mostly).

He's so tired at this point that he thinks he can feel the shifting of the earth underneath him, the crash and slide of the tectonic plates magnified until he can't walk straight and he can feel his body pulsing away, trying to stay level even as the world conspires to unbalance him.

Thank God for his bed. He collapses into it, feebly kicking his shoes off as he crawls under the covers.

The clock by his bed reads four-thirty. For a moment he can't remember if it's four-thirty in the morning or the afternoon. Hell, he can't remember what he did earlier today (yesterday?).

It's still kind of dark outside, so it must be morning.

Morning. He has to go to work most mornings.

He hated the mornings as a child.

Hated the hours in the early dawn, and yet he savored them too, lying there absorbed in blankets and with his thoughts of school and home and how things maybe would be better today, because they couldn't be much worse than yesterday.

Hated how he wouldn't get to sleep until minutes before his alarm went off, so he'd sleep right though it and his mom would burst through the door and start screeching at him to _turn that off right now Robert you'll wake up the neighbors and they'll call the cops and we'll all go to jail for the rest of our miserable lives; you've ruined us all with your selfishness_.

He especially hated breakfast with his family. They didn't have many rules, but they did all have to eat breakfast together. His father with his head splayed down on the table, hungover and bitter. His brother trying to be so ridiculously angelic towards them all, as if his goodness could fix their dysfunction.

His mother.

One day silent and stony, refusing to acknowledge any of them. One day manic, zipping around splashing enough pancake batter in the griddle to serve a platoon, kissing them all and talking until her jaw locked up. One day terrified, keeping him and his brother hidden away in closets so they wouldn't be _taken_. And then motherly, taking the time to show them the pockets of wonder tucked away in the world—the way the sky reflects in puddles and the laziness of a kitten stretched out and the way math problems, bitch though they be, make you feel that there is structure in the world because B and A divide cleanly into C. Over cereal, she spent hours delving into poetry: T. S. Eliot and "When I May Cease To Be" and "A Spirit Haunts" and "Heritage," and then she'd break off and tell them stories she believed to be true so much that they started to believe her as well—maybe Francis Goren really _was _an 18th century pirate scuppering for wares, or the muse to El Greco, or the first passenger on a hot air balloon.

His difficult, crazy, wonderful mother.

Forty years ago she…changed into this. Forty years ago this month—this _week_, actually, when he noticed for the first time that something was different with Mommy. That she was…off.

Anniversaries are difficult. Always have been. Such a calendraic _stab _of a reminder that last year on April 3rd Norman died and Mallory's been three decades sober and Laken's known about the cancer for whole month now.

His mother once taught him that math sections off the world into sharp logical segments.

And now, she's teaching him that just because something is logically segmented—forty years, four decades of schizophrenia—it's not _logical_, because mothers shouldn't get schizophrenia and children shouldn't be afraid and adults shouldn't be traumatized after all this fucking time.

He closes his eyes. _Sleep_. _Please_.

After how long (four days) of sleeplessness, he should be able to sleep.

Then again, after how long (forty years) of dealing with his mother's schizophrenia, he should be able to accept it. He's not seven anymore. Not a scared helpless child.

And yet…

It's why he's been avoiding calling her this week. Why he's suddenly exposed and vulnerable with Eames.

Why he can't sleep.

_Please_.

But the hours pass with his eyes pasted open and then suddenly it's seven o'clock and time to escape the past and drown in coffee.

Work passes dreamily, slashes and stabs of conversation and deduction barely breaking through his consciousness.

He thinks about sleep all day and goes home and has half a bottle of Scotch and he still can't sleep.


	6. Friday

**A/N. My apologies for the delay. Particularly as I decided, after all, not to revise this. The thing is, this isn't my favorite story. I like some of the lines and I like Saturday's entry, but not a lot of the rest. I wrote most of it in the unearthly hours between 3 and 6 in the morning during the time I was averaging 2-4 hours of sleep a night (projecting, me? Nah), and I can tell. I think the writing's bland and disorienting, and some of the entries are just excuses to have one per day for the week, which completely goes against my belief that every word should matter, should be damn integral to the plot and set the atmosphere and move the characters along. If something doesn't do that, you cut it out. Or revise.**

**But, I'm not going to revise this. I think that the saving grace of this story is that it still feels very true to sleeplessness, to the wavy dizziness you get when your body refuses to allow you to rest. If I revise it, I think I'll lose that.**

**I actually figured this out the day I was supposed to submit, but then I got distracted trying to figure out the pattern for the quilt I'm working on and I returned to the first draft of a finished novel and began preparations to revise it (and then 14 pages into the revision I randomly started another book instead), and between work and irritating school issues and hearing my little niece laugh for the first time after weeks of trying to cajole her into laughter when I was there (seriously, everyone else in my family heard her laugh before I did and I'm the one who sees her the most)…posting just didn't happen.**

**Let the posting deluge (er...trickle) resume!**

**FRIDAY**

For the first time _ever_, he falls asleep on the job. He's at his desk, on hold waiting to talk to a CEO, and the soft drone of Bach through the phone lulls him right to sleep. Lulls him right out of his chair, in fact. He wakes up when he crashes to his knees and smacks his head off his desk, with "Hello?—Hello?" buzzing in his ear.

He lays flat on his back and closes his eyes and it's like sleeping, almost. But Eames is beside him, cradling his head in her lap and bending over him so the tips of her hair brushes his face, and so he must be awake because when he sleeps Eames is not there. "Bobby? Bobby! Call a bus," she yells. Her fingers skim over his forehead, his eyelids and his nose and his cheeks. He doesn't want to open his eyes and find out it's all a dream.

"Alex," he murmurs.

"Hang on, honey. An ambulance is coming."

"I don't need an ambulance."

"You hit your head."

"I'm _fine_." He drags himself up into a seated position and the world spins a bit, but then it settles back down. "I just—I don't know what happened. I got dizzy for a moment." (And yes, he is too embarrassed to admit to his senior partner that he fell asleep at work.)

Ross, drawn from his office from the commotion, bends down beside him. "What the hell happened, Detective? Are you all right?"

"I'm _fine_," he says again. He gets up, swaying slightly, and Eames grabs his side.

"I'm taking him home," Eames says suddenly, looking at Ross and daring him to object. "He won't go to the hospital, and he shouldn't be at work."

"He should go to the doctor."

"He _won't_. I know him."

"I'm right here," he mutters, but everyone ignores him as they try to figure out what to do with him.

Ross sighs. "Fine. You'll stay with him, I assume?"

"Why would you assume?" he asks, but he's still being ignored.

"Yeah, I'm staying with him."

"Fine."

He holds on to her as they walk out of the squad room. She doesn't object.

"What's _wrong_?" she demands in the elevator. "Are you sick?"

"I'm tired," he mumbles. "I've been awake for…_days_, feels like."

She takes his hand and he slumps back against the wall of the elevator until it's time to make the trek out to her car.

The steady vibrating motion of the car during the drive home knocks him out so hard he doesn't notice they're at his apartment until he feels Eames' hand on his arm. "I carry my nephew in when he falls asleep in the car, Bobby, but I don't think I can carry you. You have to get up."

Through the blanket of his tiredness he gets up.

He falls into bed with his clothes on, kicking his shoes off as he scrambles under the covers. "Stay, please," he mumbles, half asleep already. "I slept better when you were here before. Almost normal. 'S good luck talisman. Eames my rabbit foot—Blarney Stone, but won't kiss you, because…can't."

"Shut up, Goren." But she's smiling as she slides in beside him, bare-legged. (_When did she change into shorts? Wasn't she here the whole time? Everything's shifting._) "I'm here. Go to sleep."

He turns on his side and wraps an arm around her. "This okay?"

"Snuggle up to your rabbit foot," she murmurs. "Just go to sleep, Bobby."

He does.

Hours later, he opens his eyes again. Must've slept because the clock's so much later, but it doesn't feel like it.

"Have a nice nap?"

"Mm-hmmm."

"Really?"

"It was okay." This should be awkward--his body next to hers, skin grazing skin--but for some reason it's not. "Did you sleep?"

"No."

He pulls away so he can see her. "You could have gotten up. You didn't have to stay here with me the entire time."

She shakes her head and tugs his arms back around her. "I was trying to sleep; I just couldn't."

"Why not?"

She doesn't answer.

He fits his hand loosely around her side, cloaking her with his fingers. "Eames…" he murmurs, soft and cajoling.

"Why don't you go back to sleep?" she suggests. "I'll stay right here."

"You haven't been sleeping either, have you?"

She yawns involuntarily, and he smirks.

"It's just been a bad week," she says quietly. "I really…don't want to get into it."

"Oh." He squeezes her side once and then lets go, rolls over on to his back. His eyes close again and he thinks about drifting off, but he doesn't, because he can feel Eames quiet beside him. "What time is it?"

"Almost eight."

Almost nighttime. Almost the time when you are supposed to sleep, when Eames will leave to go to her own place to sleep, and when he will be left all alone, wide awake into the night.

He sighs and rubs his face. Best to get this over with quickly. "Eames, you should go. You're tired, and you'll probably sleep better at your place."

"I doubt it," she mutters. "Here, at least I think I have a shot at it."

He glances over at her and finds that she's bruised-looking, splashes of sickly blue and purple under her eyes, greenish-yellow splotched across her cheeks, a crayon box of insomnia.

"I'm not going to ask," he says after a while. "I don't want to pry."

She snorts listlessly. "Yeah, right."

He smiles. "Okay, so I _want _to pry, but I'm not going to. Just, Eames…are you all right?"

The silence is painful, but he lets it go on.

"I can't sleep in my room, Bobby, because of the picture of Joe on my dresser," she eventually says. "It was this week ten years ago that he died. It's hard every year, but there's just something about it being exactly a decade…it's worse, suddenly." She swallows carefully. "I see his picture at night before I close my eyes, and then—I don't know. The actual anniversary of his death was on Sunday, but almost a week later I still can't sleep. It's...just not _logical_. That he died. That it's been an entire decade. You know?" She keeps her face carefully away from him, and he doesn't move, afraid to breathe, afraid any flinch will clam her up. "Anniversaries are hard."

"I know." The words sound so hollow.

He takes her hand and she turns to her side, suddenly, facing him. "I miss him. I do. I…forget about him, sometimes—maybe not _forget_, exactly, but there are stretches where I'm not actively thinking about him. And then something happens that _makes _me think of him, and then it's even worse because I feel guilty about not thinking about him—and then, _then _I feel guilty for making his death about me. _I _wasn't thinking about him. _I _miss him. And it's not about me, you know? It's about him, or it should be. His life. His death."

"We mourn for ourselves," he says quietly. "The pain's because of them, but what we really miss is how they made us feel."

Alex shakes her head. "Sometimes. I don't know. Joe had such _potential_. He…wanted to change the world. I thought he was going to, and then…he died."

He feels pressed down into the bed by all the pain in the room. "I'm sorry."

"Who are you sorry for?" she whispers. "Me or him?"

"I'm sorry for you," he says. "And him. And…the world."

Her eyes glisten liquid but she blinks it away. "Me too," she says softly, reaching for him. "Me too."

He puts his arms around her and she puts her arms around him and he holds her until her breathing slows and she drifts off to fitful sleep.

He doesn't sleep for the rest of the night, but he doesn't mind because he gets to watch her sleep.

Even if she is dreaming of someone else.

**A/N. I borrowed the "we mourn for ourselves" idea from C. S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed," which is a fascinating look at grief. Downright depressing at times (it's one of the two books I've ever cried over), but so moving and desperate and real that basically at this point I'm just shilling for it. **


	7. Saturday

**SATURDAY**

Seven am she wakes with a start and a groan, her body twitching to life in his arms. Her hair is folded up under her head, strands sticking out and lying across her face, and her tank top is rumpled up at her waist. "I was asleep," she says, amazed. "I actually slept. Not well, and I'm still tired, but I did."

"Good."

She smiles at him and stretches in his arms. Muscle tensing, tightening, relaxing under skin. He lets her go.

"Did you sleep any more?"

He turns his face into the pillow so he can't see the way her bare shoulder peeks out from where the straps of her tank top have fallen down. "No."

Her face is just inches from his on the pillow. "I don't want to get up."

"Me either." Almost an entire week of screwed up sleep—more so screwed up than normal. He's not sure he's _capable _of getting up. "Let's stay in today."

Eames wiggles beside him in that awakening pattern of rediscovering muscles and feeling the sheets slide against skin and soaking up body-heat generated warmth. "But I'm hungry."

"You're hungry," he murmurs. "For what?"

"Mmmm…I don't know. I was thinking about muffins from the deli, but I don't want to get up."

"Just want to stay in bed all day."

"Exactly."

He thinks about how Eames wants to stay in his bed all day, and then he gets up. "I'll be right back."

"Where're you going?" she murmurs sleepily. "Stay here."

"Be right back."

Half an hour later he's back in bed, bag of muffins and coffee (decaf) in hand. Eames is dozing, but she snaps awake when she feels him slide under the covers beside her.

"Hi, sleepy."

"Mmmmph." But she sits up. Her hair sticks to her face. "I smell muffins."

"Blueberry _and _chocolate chip. I went all out."

She reaches across him for the bag. "Thank you."

He nods, giving her a quick grin, and then they prop themselves up against the headboard and proceed to their breakfast in bed. Eames clicks on the tv so they can watch the news and it feels so normal, so…comfortable. Like home. Like a _home _home. Crumbs in bed and no one cares. Saturdays off. Snuggly blankets. Warmth. A lazy day stretching out before them.

And someone to share it with.

He finishes his muffin before Eames and then scrunches back down under the blankets, preparing to close his eyes in all this nice safe daylight in the even nicer even safer shadow of Eames above him.

"Hand me the remote, Bobby. I forgot that this anchor gets on my nerves."

"_You _had it last."

"I think it's in the blankets somewhere."

He starts pawing through the covers, exhaustion making his movements labored and heavy. "I'm not seeing it, Eames. Are you sure—" His hand lands on her bare leg, high up on her thigh so he can just feel the rustle of the edge of her shorts against his fingers. He stops breathing. Skin so smooth and warm. In one brief second he thinks he can feel the throb of her heart, the pulse of her blood moving through her veins; he thinks he can feel cells dividing and multiplying; he thinks he can feel everything that makes her _Alex_, her mind and her thoughts and her heart all through this patch of leg he never wants to let go of—

"Oh. Sorry." He takes his hand away. Breathes, a bit unsteadily.

"I found it." Eames holds the remote up and continues chewing, as if nothing happened.

"Good."

He eases further down under the covers, suddenly wide awake.

"Let's go back to sleep," Eames murmurs, sliding down beside him. "Stay here the whole day. We have muffins—what more could we need?"

He tries to smile but fails. A muscle starts jerking in his leg, and he's getting restless. "I don't know."

His arm is falling asleep. He tries positioning it behind his head, but that's uncomfortable, so he drapes it across his stomach, which is also uncomfortable. He thinks about tucking it at his side, but Eames' leg is right there again, her waist and the curve of her hip, and he'd probably brush against her during the tucking.

The bed, once so desirable and comfortable, is now confining.

"Stop fidgeting."

"Sorry."

He can't get his head to a comfortable position. He shifts on the pillow, and then shifts again.

"Bobby."

"Sorry."

He rolls over on to his side, changes his mind and flips on to his back. Side, again. Then back.

"_Bobby!_"

"I can't get comfortable."

"Just find a spot and _lay still_."

Side.

Back.

Will this never end?

Eames grabs his arm and pulls it around her waist, tugging him over on to his side facing her. His hand accidentally slips up under her shirt--and there's her _back_, taut muscles and soft skin under his fingers; it feels just as good as her thigh.

He is not supposed to be having these thoughts about his partner. Especially not this week, after she's just confessed to him how she's still grieving for Joe.

"Are you comfortable _now_?" she demands.

"Are _you_?"

His hand is still on her back.

"I'm all right."

"Well all right then."

Hand still there.

Her hand…her hand slips up under his shirt.

"We match now," she mutters, and she sounds embarrassed and determined all at the same time. She won't look him in the eyes.

He shifts closer to her. "I like matching."

"I can think of another way we can match," she whispers.

"Hmmm…really?"

"I told you why I haven't been sleeping."

"And you want me to tell you the same," he sighs.

"See, we do match. You can read my mind."

"Can you read mine now?"

She thinks for a long minute, her eyes searching his. Her hand moving faintly over his back. "It's something…significant. Something that's impacted you deeply. I think it happened over the weekend, because you've been off ever since Monday."

"Sunday," he whispers. "It happened Sunday. An anniversary, of sorts."

"Keep going," she prods, but he shakes his head. "All right. It's not a birthday. Or…a death day. Unless there's someone I don't know about?"

He shakes his head.

"It's not something recent, because I would have noticed last year that something was up. So it's been a while, but this year it's a specific number, an important number, ten or twenty years."

"Forty."

"Forty years ago," she murmurs. "You would have been seven." She stops, and bites her lip, and he knows she has it. "Your mother. It's when the schizophrenia started."

"Yeah." His voice is hoarse.

"You remember the exact day?"

"Yeah." He doesn't elaborate. It's a story for another time, when he has more energy and can properly think again.

"Oh, Bobby." She shakes her head, and her fingers convulse in on his back. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry for Joe," he whispers.

She wraps her other arm around him and they both, stories told, fall off into sleep for the rest of the day and into the night.

**A/N. One more day to go.**


End file.
